CKE Restaurants, owner of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's restaurant chains, announced today that it will work to ensure that its pork supply is purchased from suppliers who use group housing methods for pigs. The two restaurant chains combined have more than 3,000 locations worldwide.

"CKE Restaurants, Inc. supports the humane treatment of animals, having requested its pork suppliers to develop practical and sustainable alternatives to the use of gestation stalls and to transition to a group housing environment for sows," wrote CKE in a statement sent to The HSUS. "CKE will strive to completely transition its pork supplies to only utilize animals raised in group housing situations by 2022."

CKE first began transitioning to gestation crate-free pork five years ago. Today's announcement represents the latest in the company's progress on this important animal welfare issue.

"CKE was one of the first major restaurant chains to begin moving away from gestation crate pork, and we applaud the company for continuing its evolution toward its goal of a gestation crate-free supply chain," said Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm animal protection for The HSUS. "Consumers care about how farm animals are treated, and cramming them in cages where they can barely move for their entire lives is simply out-of-step with those values."

Compass Group, the nation's largest foodservice company with more than 10,000 dining operations across the country, enacted a policy to make its supply chain gestation crate-free by 2017.

Major pork producers like Smithfield Foods and Hormel have committed to stop using gestation crates at their company-owned breeding operations by 2017. Cargill is already 50-percent gestation crate-free.

Nine U.S. states have banned the practice and others have bills pending that would outlaw gestation crates.

Renowned animal welfare scientist and advisor to the pork industry Temple Grandin, Ph.D., is clear on this issue: “Confining an animal for most of its life in a box in which it is not able to turn around does not provide a decent life.” Grandin further states, “We’ve got to treat animals right, and the gestation stalls have got to go.”